1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to communications over the Internet, and in particular, to providing secure communications between client computers and an array of servers.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the development of a large Web site supporting an Internet-based service, such as an e-commerce site or a telecommunications service site, scalability may be achieved by employing a parallel array of servers. Such large Web site may also employ a load balancer to receive client requests and then redirect the requests to one of the servers in the array which is least busy at the time the request is received.
Web developers may employ a technique known as frames to present multiple Web pages to a user within one browser screen. Frames technique enables partitioning of the entire browser screen into separate areas which are in effect separate Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents. The HTML documents loaded into the frames may be configured to enable one frame to load the other frame. However, if a Web site employing frames technique is hosted in a parallel array of servers, the ability of one frame to load another frame may be prohibited by the Web browser. This is due to the fact that Web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator enforce owner/domain permission regulation.
To facilitate the transfer of data objects between servers on the Internet and client browsers, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is often used. However, the use of HTTP to transmit private or sensitive information may not be desired since HTTP does not provide secure connection between the client's browser and the Web servers. A secure connection to a Web site may be established by invoking Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) which provides secure communication through a security mechanism commonly known as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). If multiple-framed Web pages are hosted in a parallel array of servers, the ability of one frame to load another frame using different communication protocol may be prohibited by the Web browser due to the concept of ownership imposed by browsers as noted earlier.